


It Will Be Life Soon

by misscam



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-25
Updated: 2008-07-25
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:53:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misscam/pseuds/misscam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It's spring on Earth and Laura Roslin marries William Adama, a symbol that isn't only that.</i> Four days, four seasons, and one year in the life. [Adama/Roslin, ensemble]</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Will Be Life Soon

**Author's Note:**

> For narcisia in the Christmas in July exchange, who wanted 'AR as a married couple on crappy earth. MA rated would be fantastic but optional'. I tried my best, but had slight troubles with getting explicit enough for the rating. (Sorry!) Spoilers for "Revelations", show will so make this AU when it returns to the little screen. Many thanks to lyricalviolet for beta and to littleninja245 for opinions.

It Will Be Life Soon  
by **misscam**

Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.

II

 _Spring, one day_

II

This is the day Bill Adama gets laid, and it's about frakking time.

II

It's spring.

It's hard to tell from the weather – clouds not quite raining and not quite breaking, grey clinging relentlessly even to vegetation, the surface screaming of destruction not renewal and life – but it is, confirmed by atmospheric measurements.

This part of Earth is spring. An appropriate time to start settlement, symbolic in the ways that would look good in scriptures. It's easy to imagine how it would go.

 _And Humanity came Home in Spring, having passed through the Winter of their hearts..._

It sounds good, Laura has to admit. It's too bad it's frakking bullshit.

But then, scriptures often are. Mystic, symbolic, total frakking bullshit. Stories retold become so human, and humans look for symbols. Humans like symbols. A dying leader. A dozen snakes. A mandala in the sky. A handshake. A new start in spring.

An exchange of rings. Thin bands of gold to tie hearts together, an invented symbol of love and commitment.

She doesn't really need it. Circumstance has already committed her far beyond what marriage could. It's always been her and Bill, since the end of the world forced it on them both. It hasn't always been love and not even always friendship, but she doesn't need a ring when a simple look from him tells her more than enough.

But still. Humans like symbols for a reason.

It's spring on Earth and Laura Roslin marries William Adama, a symbol that isn't only that.

II

It's Laura's first marriage and Bill's second, and they toast it silently with water in his quarters after, not so much a celebration as just an acknowledgment. With all that has happened, anything else would feel out of place. It's potentially troublesome enough as it is - the Admiral and the President and Zarek has scowled more than once at even the potential - but it's also something to cling to.

It used to be faith in Earth to hold on to.

Earth sucks.

When Bill kisses her, Laura laces her fingers in his hair and holds on as if they might both still fall.

II

It's the 400th funeral on Galactica in a month, and it's an almost deserted one.

The Admiral and President stopped coming after the 100th, each one they did attend making their faces seem harder and more distant. So many suicides, so many funerals. Perhaps they finally realised they of all people could not afford to get lost in loss. Wisdom in that.

Saul Tigh was never wise, and he sits at every one, this one place where he will not run out of grief and be forced to forgive himself.

II

Bill sees beauty where he loves, eyes bright as he looks at her and fingers gentle as he strokes her skin. She can almost imagine his fingerprints lingering on her skin even after his touch has moved on, like trace evidence; a faint map of _here was Bill_.

Here is Laura, and she slips her hands beneath his waistline to feel his soft hiss against her lips.

II

Here was humanity, the ruins scream at the sky every time Racetrack passes over them, and she wishes she could be deaf already. All these recons, each one affirming what they already know, wearing pilot after pilot down.

Here was humanity. Here are just ruins, the scars of Earth.

II

When Laura kisses Bill's scar, she can feel his heartbeat against her lips too, like an echo of her own. She almost lost him then, she knows, before she even had him. It makes his scar almost beautiful – a symbol of life endured against bullets, William Adama taking on death and winning.

She doesn't stop him when he removes her wig gently, and his kiss against her scalp and the faint growth of hair is burning.

II

Without her, they might never have found Earth, Kara considers, watching the sun burn at the sky and the Raptors flying across. An illusion of light, on the illusion of their new home.

Without her, they might never have found it. Just chased the idea indefinitely, losing a bit of hope on the way. But not all. This killed all in one fell swoop, and she made it happen.

Kara Thrace. Harbinger of doom. Maybe they'll put it on her grave, or let her have it as her new call sign. Harbinger.

"Frak this," Kara says, and the Earth doesn't answer.

II

"Laura," Bill whispers, and Laura doesn't answer, keeping her eyes closed. She knows what she'll see. She just wants to feel it for a moment.

His nose brushing against hers, his kisses feather-light, the weight of him not light at all and still not crushing, the bone of his hip hard against her thigh even through skin, his shoulder broad against her palm and her fingers getting a grip, his cock hard and still inside her while he waits for her to adjust, the feel of sweat on his forehead against hers as he strains not to move – she feels it all and more, and when she opens her eyes she can read Bill's expression as clearly as she could any book.

"I love you," she tells him, lifting her body to meet his thrust.

He's already told her.

II

Cylons shouldn't dream of Earth, but Sharon has.

Always bright, always sunny, always Helo there, always Hera laughing in the grass. She never believed it was prophetic or a vision or anything but a dream, but it was still always comforting.

It was going to be their home. Earth. Humanity's new home and hers, humanity adopted. It was a dream. It isn't now.

Cylons shouldn't grieve Earth, but Sharon does and she isn't alone.

Humanity has never had the patent on grief.

II

She arches, and Bill supports her with a hand on her back, the other straining against the bulkhead. She can feel the strength in him – hers have failed her in body, but she is with him in mind and that's always been them. Sometimes against each other, sometimes with, and now, carrying grief together.

Solace in skin, consolation in coupling, heartening by hearts; and when her heartbeat becomes a roar of white in her head, she lets it drown out everything else willingly.

II

"We're not going to bring a vote of no confidence against Roslin," Lee tells Zarek. "Even if you got the Quorum with you right now, it wouldn't be about her leadership, it would be about you pinning your disappointment to her."

"You could be President again."

"Not like that. It wouldn't be right."

"I wasn't going to bring the vote," Zarek says calmly. "I don't know who talked to you, but I dissuaded the notion. There will be no vote. And you, Mr Adama, will have to learn soon enough sometimes, there are no options but wrong."

Lee is pretty sure he is right.

II

"Bill, do you think it would have been better if Earth had stayed a lie?" Laura asks him, voice almost breaking as she does. He stares at her, and she lowers her head against his chest, not wanting to meet his gaze.

"I don't think that," he says after a breath, his fingers finding her chin and lifting her face to look at him.

"I made you believe."

"Without you, we'd all be dead."

"Maybe that would..." she begins, and his kiss steals the rest of her words, leaving them unspoken.

She still thinks them.

II

When Caprica Six knocks, Saul lets her into his quarters without comment or much acknowledgment. She notes the bottles, but doesn't say anything, doesn't give a lecture. She won't be drinking with him either though, he's pretty sure. She isn't Ellen.

When she kisses him, it's still Ellen's lips he feels.

II

"It's going to be hard for a long time," Bill says, pressing his cheek against her forehead and stroking a thumb across her wrist almost absentmindedly.

"Has it stopped being hard? I hadn't noticed."

He chuckles slightly, but it's not really out of merriment.

"We didn't get the easy way," he observes, and she knows he isn't just talking about the Fleet.

"No," she agrees. "But we're still here."

"Right here," he affirms, lifting his hand to rest palm against palm with hers, fingers against fingers and wedding band against wedding band.

When she kisses him, Bill lifts a hand to her neck and holds on as if she's all that's keeping him from falling.

II

It's spring on Earth and despair across the Fleet, but seasons change and humans adapt and hope is ever treacherous.

Here is humanity.

They've come home.

II

 _Summer, one day_

II

This is the day Laura Roslin-Adama dances in the grass, and doesn't get a new home after all.

II

Everyone remembers Baltar's ground-breaking ceremony, Laura knows. Even Baltar, which would have made making a slightly improved one an almost tempting option normally. But that's a small, petty thought she only entertains for the fun of it and the actual official ceremony for Earth's first (new) settlement is a sombre, almost silent affair.

It's actually not bad for a few months of building, Laura has to concede. Rows of planted crop framing wooden houses, an almost attractive agricultural image of this new colony. Or it would be, if ruins weren't visible on the horizon, radiation levels weren't under constant monitoring and half the crops are likely to fail with the unpredictable weather.

Still.

The press is there, the Quorum is there, and selected crewmembers of the Galactica is there, almost all wearing the same expression. It isn't hopeful or even glad, just a sort of resigned sense of moving on to it. The worst of the desperation has passed, and they're still here. No suicides in a week, and even a birth last week. Not on Earth yet, but there will be.

After the end of the world, there was still survival. There can be nothing less on Earth, so help her the Gods.

Bill is there, and she feels his gaze on her all through her short speech and the questions from the press after. She ducks most of them, only confirming briefly that she is indeed having a break in treatment and that her personal settlement on Earth is still in the planning stages.

Everything else, she doesn't really want to consider the answers to.

 _Will this alliance last? Will the other Cylons come? Do you have confidence in your settlement plans? Are you any further in your investigation of what happened here? Will we survive, Madam President? Will we?_

Colonial One has been more or less permanently parked on Earth, and she leaves the Quorum to play with the press to head there. It's a haven of sorts, even if it's not really a home anymore. Galactica is that, and the reason enters just after her.

"Lee looked in his element," she tells Bill, perching herself slightly on the desk and watching him pause a few feet away from her. He looks the Admiral today in his dress uniform and controlled expression, and she's finding it hard armour to read through.

"He does well," he agrees, but without commitment. Bill might still want his son in his own element, especially now that the rest of his family might slowly break apart.

"This isn't New Caprica, Bill," she says softly. "Most civilians have been reluctant to come down here. I can't imagine the crew of Galactica will be any keener."

"They aren't," he says, looking at her a little darkly. "I'm not easing up this time. I made the mistake once. There are still hostile Cylons out there, and not much friendlier Cylons with us."

"I know," she says, crossing her arms a little crossly. "I supported you on it. It's a military decision, Admiral."

"You're talking about settling here," he says sharply, cutting through and leaving her a little breathless at the sudden emotion on his face. "If you're planetside and we're forced to jump away, Madam President..."

"I know," she says again. "I was there last time. You came back for us."

He doesn't look particularly cheered up by that, and she knows what he knows - they're running out of places to run. If the Cylons come again, there might not be anything to jump to.

"Bill," she says, deliberately softening her tone. "I have to settle here. For the symbol of it. I will still be on Galactica for treatments. I will still be on Galactica for you."

Without comment, she takes the agenda she has drawn up for the day from her desk and hands it to him. He looks at her quizzically, and she just nods to the paper.

"Item one. Quorum meeting, discussion of construction of a Quorum building... Laura, you've already told me your itinerary for the day."

"Skip to the end."

"Item number five. Bill," he reads, and stops, lifting his head to look at her. "Item number five is just 'Bill'?"

"Yes," she says. "Item number five is Bill. But it's never been just."

He considers that, and her, and finally steps up to, pushing her against the desk as he leans into her. There's still anger in him, but she knows isn't directed at her. It just concerns her.

"I'll meet you after," he says, lifting a hand to her cheek. "We'll spend the night on Earth and go back to Galactica in the morning."

"Yes," she agrees, and tilts her head to meet his kiss.

It doesn't matter where you live when you can take home with you, she thinks.

II

It is sunset when Bill takes Laura to a raptor landed some distance away, and she supposes it's the pilot version of taking a girl out in the car. He's dressed a little casually, and she's slipped into a dress, letting her hair out too. It's still too short to reach her shoulders, and if (when, she is pretty sure) she goes back on Diloxin again she knows it'll be lost again. But for now, it feels normal, and she takes her shoes off to walk in the grass.

Bill watches her, leaning against the side of the raptor, watching her as if the sight of her is enough. Sometimes, she thinks it is.

"Looks good on you," he says, nodding at her feet.

"What?"

"Earth."

She laughs a little, and he smiles. He has a lovely smile, she considers, and all the more so for how rarely he gives it.

"It's not what we wanted to find," she says, and even saying it makes her hands ball a little. "But I think it's a beautiful planet. Crappy Earth, but a beautiful planet."

"Yes," he agrees. "I've decided. If the Cylons come here – the other Cylons – I'm not jumping Galactica. I'm staying to fight."

"Bill…"

"Military decision, Madam President."

"Don't get Admiral with me," she says a touch angrily, before exhaling. "Sorry. Don't stay for me, Bill. Not for me."

"For you," he says evenly, but before she can argue it he continues. "For Lee. For Helo and Athena. For Starbuck. Even for Zarek. You convinced me to survive after the fall of the Twelve Colonies. But we need to stay to survive now. We need a home. Let it be Earth."

"It could be Galactica," she says, covering his fist with her palm and feeling the cold of his wedding band, the twin of her own. "It is for me."

"It could be just you," he counters simply, and she almost wants to drag him down to the grass then and there. "But I'm not sharing you with the Fleet."

She smiles, not wanting to point out in a way, he already does – at least the part of her that is the President. But then, he knows that.

"Who knows, we might win," he says thoughtfully, as if only considering the idea now. "Without their Hub, they are vulnerable, and we have Cylons on our side too."

"Are we siding with the right Cylon faction, you think?"

"We're siding with the one that isn't currently trying to kill us. That's right enough for me."

"Mmm," she agrees. It's hard to argue with that. "Maybe they won't come at all."

"A wise woman once told me maybe we should just enjoy what we have," he says, kissing the bridge of her nose gently.

"I am."

He takes her hand, kissing her knuckles before straightening and leading her across the grass; a dance with naked feet in the dying light of the sun, waiting for the night.

II

Hera isn't sure why her parents jump apart so quickly when she walks over to their bunk, not old enough yet to know what the flustered faces and darting looks can mean and what no clothes under the blanket certainly does. All she knows is what she's seeing in her head, the image of her dream as clear as if it is just waiting to be real.

"They're coming," Hera says, and she smiles. They are coming.

All of them, aiming for the sun.

II

 _Autumn, one day_

II

This is the day Kara Thrace dies again, and it feels strangely like relief.

II

The baseship is black, but with the nukes she's carrying, Kara knows very soon it will be the brightest star in the sky.

Harbinger of doom, she thinks. Cylon doom. Not humanity. Not on her frakking watch. Not with Lee down there, and the Old Man and Galactica so close, and not when she can do something about it. Be better in death than in life.

Kara Thrace's special destiny. It could be that.

"Kara?" Sam says again.

"Don't worry, Sam," she says, watching his viper align itself with her. He won't leave her, she knows, and she doesn't have the time to get him tied up somewhere. Somehow, she's always known he would go down with her. "First time is much easier than the second."

Time to die like a soldier.

Again.

Second time really isn't that much harder, she finds.

II

Galactica groans, and Laura clings to the nearest upright object she can find, feeling each missile as blow against her body too. They are getting hammered fairly hard, and she looks up to see Bill moving his lips in silent prayer. Not to the Gods, she knows. To his pilots.

'I love you,' she mouths silently at him, this bloodied, battered shape of him. He won't see, but it doesn't matter. He knows. She just finds comfort in saying it.

This close to death, she can almost taste it, and it isn't the bitter defeat of cancer. It's sharper, this soldier's death in battle. Just one more missile now. Just one more and she steels herself against it.

It never comes.

It goes eerily silent; the only noise the steady tick of instruments like a heartbeat across the CIC.

"Did she do it?" Bill asks, and she looks up to see his eyes are closed.

"Yes, sir," Gaeta confirms, voice a little hoarse. "Enemy baseship is down. I repeat, last enemy baseship is down."

"Starbuck?"

Gaeta swallows, and swallows, finally finding a voice. "Negative, sir. The blast took her out too. And sir, Anders... Anders followed her."

Bill lowers his head, and Laura tastes the salt of her own tears; she just isn't sure if they're for him or for Kara or for them all.

II

"This isn't all their baseships," Athena says, and Caprica nods, a hand encircling her belly. "They could come again."

"We beat back this wave. They might leave us alone."

Neither of them comments on the other's use of 'they' on their own people, but then, neither of them noticed it either.

II

  
"There were some survivors from the other faction. What should we do about them?" Dualla asks, and Bill can't even focus on the question. All he wants is to bury his face against Laura's shoulder, and stand still until he can feel silence again.

"It's their civil war. Let the Cylons sort it out."

"Sir?"

"What?"

"One of them is Boomer, sir."

II

Lee doesn't trust his voice, so he doesn't speak while Helo informs him on the wireless; the voice almost as distant as the stars up there on Galactica. It all feels very distant, and when Helo is done, Lee simply hangs up and walks out a little.

The air is cold, a sort of autumn crisp he remembers from Caprica too. It's a starry night, an almost full moon and the sky a deep blue that is almost black, but not quite. A calm night now, unlike the flashes of battle visible even from Earth earlier.

A fight Lee could just watch. Used to be vipers and raptors and space he fought in. Now it's with words and laws and the Quorum.

The Quorum.

The Quorum building is almost finished, and for what Starbuck did, his father did, even what Laura did it now will be. Earth is defended. Their home stands.

Kara for Earth, he thinks. That's not fair. That's not fair at all, and he wasn't even given a choice between them.

There is another call for him when he walks back in, and for a moment, he thinks it might he his father. At least until he hears the voice and knows it's close enough.

"It's Laura," Laura says, his father's grief strangely strong in her voice. "Kara's gone. I'm so sorry."

"I know," Lee says, and only then can he cry.

II

It's a strange mirror of when he saw her die, Galen observes and sees Boomer in manacles across the hallway. Except there are no tears now, no Cally, and only a strange moment of vertigo.

"Galen," she says.

"Guess I was one too all along," he tells her, and when she reaches for him, he doesn't walk away.

II

Bill leans on her in the shower, hardly space for water between their bodies and Laura half wishes her bones weren't weary from cancer and could steady him forever. She knows she'll have to find a wall to let him steady against rather than her soon, but for now, her strength holds.

She kisses his cheeks, his still bleeding wound across his forehead, the lines of his face etched in grief, the water across his eyelids and the curve of his ears; he clings on while the water washes the blood and tears from them both.

"She told me she was already dead," he whispers, his fingers digging almost painfully into her shoulder.

"Kara?"

"Kara," he says, his voice like an eulogy.

II

When Tigh toasts Starbuck silently, it's the last drink of the bottle, a fact that would worry him if he didn't already have another ready.

It's a funny thing, but he would never have thought frakking skinjobs were any good at human vices.

II

Bill doesn't want to dress, so she doesn't either; just wraps them both in towels, and sits next to him on the floor. She knows he should get the cut looked at, and Cottle would probably love to berate her for even taking a step out of sickbay, but it all feels secondary right now.

"You'll make a symbol out of her," he says, and he sounds more tired than she's ever heard him.

"The Fleet will do that regardless of what I do," she says, brushing a drop of water from his hair and stroking his temple gently. "But if I can help that along, I will. They need a symbol like that. Bill, she saved us."

"She said she doomed us too," he mutters, pushing a hand to his forehead. "I should have known she would do something Starbuck from how she talked yesterday. I didn't..."

He chokes and she kisses him, parting his lips with hers and breathing into him until he sighs, just once, just resigned.

She knows she has him for life then.

II

Sharon holds him as Helo just breathes, breathes and exhales until his throat feels burning with the oxygen in it.

"I heard," she whispers. Of course she has. "Helo, some of my... Some of the Eights and Sixes wants to have a ceremony for Sam with our pilots."

"Why?"

"He was one of them too."

"I'll set it up," he promises, and wonders how many funerals it takes to erase the differences between human and Cylon.

They should frakking well have had enough already.

II

All the times they've slept together – on good days, on days the Admiral and the President weren't worn out, on bad days – Bill's always been gentle, treating her body as if it is made of glass and might break without care.

He isn't gentle now.

The force of his thrusts slams her against the wall, and she's already breathless from the demands of his kiss. His hand is relentless between her legs too, the other keeping her knee lifted. She's going to bruise, but Cottle will probably think it a result of the battle. Hopefully.

This is Bill too, she knows, biting down on her lip and pressing his forehead so hard against his she can feel his blood stick to her skin. This is Bill too, the anger, the grief and the fighter.

The father, losing his children.

She can't take his grief, but she does take his body.

II

"Saul." Caprica's voice is urgent even through his alcohol haze, and he curses it.

"I'm not in the mood, woman."

"Saul, it's not that."

"What is it then?"

"I'm going into labour."

II

"Boomer's alive," Bill tells her, his voice so artificially even he can't not be feeling something. "She's one of the survivors of the enemy Cylons. Kara's dead and Boomer's alive."

A life for a death, she thinks distantly. Just the wrong way around.

"I'm sorry."

She lowers her head on his shoulder, feeling his hand around her waist as he adjusts the blankets around them.

"I'm tired," he says hoarsely, voice breaking.

"Me too," she whispers, closing her eyes when he kisses her temple. "Do you think we could just stay in here and sleep for a year?"

When he exhales, she can imagine him entertain the notion and she can almost imagine it herself. Just Laura and Bill, and sleep and sex and selfishness, hibernation until the metaphorical winter has passed and it feels like life again.

But they aren't just Laura and Bill, and she knows in the morning, they'll both get up again.

There is rest for the wicked. It's everyone else who lives restless.

II

 _Winter, one day_

II

This is the day life is a bitch, and still you live on.

II

Laura wakes with a start, for a moment not even sure where she is. It doesn't sound like Galactica, it doesn't feel like Colonial One, and she isn't alone in the bed. For a brief moment, she wonders if it's another dream that isn't a dream, but then Bill lets out a snore and she remembers this is Earth, and her house and this will probably be her last day here for a long time.

At least after she tells Bill what she has to, since he'll probably keep her shackled in Galactica's sickbay for a stubbornly long time. He is like that, and she loves him, and she has to break his heart.

Her cancer is regrouping.

Life really is a bitch, and then you die, she thinks, and watches Bill sleep.

II

Saul knows he's drinking far less simply by the increasing amount of hangovers he's getting.

He used out-drink them. Not he just drinks, and they come and it's a frakking annoyance when there's a baby bawling its lungs out at every hour of the morning.

His son. A Cylon, matching any human baby in a screaming contest. He's going to raise the damn racket as human as he can, that's for sure, and Caprica doesn't even argue it with him anymore.

Maybe it's not what you are (Saul Tigh, Final Five Cylon), but what you make yourself (Saul Tigh, hangovers like human) and what you live with (Saul Tigh, father).

Maybe it's even what you drink with (less).

He still wishes babies could come with a mute or at very least take their frakking orders better.

II

Bill wakes to a quiet, empty house and takes a moment to watch his surroundings without Laura's presence the distraction it is.

There isn't much of her just in the house – maybe just the bookshelf, a modest collection of crime, books from him, Earth literature they've salvaged and a few scientific titles Baltar has given as peace offerings. That is her. The rest feels just like a house and not Laura's house. Chairs, a lounge, a bed, a kitchen, a desk stacked with too much paperwork.

His quarters on Galactica feels more of her than this, and he knows what that means.

Most of the Fleet have adopted Earth as a home by now, even if their leaders haven't. After the battle, after no more Cylon attacks, after a warm autumn, after something almost like resignation to hope again, more and more ships have come down from the sky.

Even the harsh winter hasn't deflated it. After so long in space, they're rather used to cold.

He puts on his new winter boots and jacket before going out, finding Laura a few steps up the hill as he knew he would. She likes the spot – in the sunlight, it offers a view of the growing settlement and all the lives they've gotten here. It's too dark to see now, but will be light soon. The horizon is promising that much.

She's wearing her own jacket, but his scarf and hat and smiles a little guiltily when he walks up to her. Her hands are bare and cold though, and he envelopes them in his own.

"Hey," he says, kissing her softly. "Good morning."

"Soon will be," she acknowledges, smiling faintly. It doesn't quite reach to her eyes, and he can see now what he didn't see last night in the pleasure of seeing her again after a busy week apart – there are shadows under her eyes and her complexion reminds him of…

"Yes," she says. "The cancer has regrouped."

On the horizon, the sun rises, burning the sky as it goes.

II

Lee wakes to the sun on his window, as he always does. His head protests somewhat when he gets up, but it's only a light murmur and he's used to far worse.

Still, he should really know better than to get drinking with Saul Tigh, even at something as informal as a dinner at Laura's. And with his father present too, the first time they've really talked since Kara's funeral.

Kara, he thinks, and watches the ice receed before the sun across his window.

There was after Zak. There is after Kara too. Life is treacherous like that. Life's a bitch, and then you live on.

He moves his gaze to his desk, where the letter Laura snuck to him during the evening still lies. Not for opening yet, she told him. He'll know when it is time.

After her funeral, she didn't say.

Someone – he can't even remember who, maybe it was even drunk Baltar – told him the President of the Twelve Colonies always left a letter for his or her successor. A letter.

He doesn't want to think about the implications, so he doesn't, and thinks about Bill Adama instead.

There is after Laura, Laura seems to know, but Lee isn't all that sure about his father.

II

"Diloxin?" Bill asks, voice so hollow it cuts right through her skin and leaves her gasping a little for breath.

"I've agreed to start intensive treatments again," she replies. "But the prognosis is not good."

It wasn't to begin with, she knows he knows. But maybe the peace and calm, this lull like winter lured them both to think otherwise.

"You'll stay on Galactica," he says, like an order, and she has a moment to raise an eyebrow at his tone before the Admiral is gone, and there's just Bill. "I love you."

When he hugs her, she tries to remember how to breathe; it shouldn't normally be this hard.

II

When you breathe in winter, you can see your breath like smoke. Hera likes that. She likes winter. She likes snow, carving humans and Centurions out of it as well as she can. It's not easy, especially not when her father has a tendency to compliment her on the nice dog she's made every time.

Her father always sees what he wants to see, Hera thinks. She's learning shapes can be shaped even in the mind, making people see what they want to.

Hera sees shapes as they are. Snow is just snow, even in the likeness of her people, and she knows spring will melt them even before her mother tells her. She knows, but she likes to carve her little snow statues anyway.

It doesn't have to be forever to be important.

On the hill, she sees Laura and Bill the Admiral, the shape of them almost like one against the rising sun.

II

"How long?" Bill finally asks, bending his head as if the weight of his thoughts is suddenly too much.

"Maybe another year," she says. "Maybe less."

He doesn't look at her, and for a moment she wonders if he's even heard her. But she can see the slight tension in his jawline and the slump in his shoulder and she knows he has. It's almost impossible not to touch him, but she settles on a light hand on his shoulder and watches the horizon with him.

"A year is a long time," he finally says, tilting his head down towards hers. She can see the grief in his eyes, but he is smiling and when he kisses her, it's soft and lingering and anchoring her to him.

In the distance, the sun bounces off snow-clad mountaintops, but already the slow thaw is beginning. Snow to water, winter to new life.

It will be spring soon.

II

FIN


End file.
